www.metro-greens.in aims at inspiring the gardener within people, to encourage them to take up gardening - enjoying the sheer joy and pleasure of sowing a seed, watching it germinate and grow over the time, and ultimately witness the charm of flowering/fruiting.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH :

Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

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Sunday, 2 November 2014

What's Growing - Malabar Spinach

My gardening
adventures, has always been a mixed bag of activities, a bag, that I like quite a lot and do like sharing here as well, and quite proudly. While I vie to make my
garden beautiful in terms visual beauty, my mother has been towards
functionality. While I get flowering plants and seeds, she's been trying
whatever eatables she could plant. A couple of weeks back, I posted about the
brinjals/aubergines/eggplants for which she asked me to get the saplings of, we
planted the plants and after a couple of months, we were able to harvest a good
produce from around half a dozen brinjal plants. The scarcity in rainfall did
have a serious impact on the produce, and the plants, were quite unable to
produce to their full potential. Since then we have harvested some really hot green
chillies as well, again from a couple of plants in some pots. I bought lotus
seeds, planted them and have got the plants now.

My mother, a
couple of months back, had bought some Malabar spinach as vegetable from the
market. She decided to have a few stems planted in one of the pots, to see if
it really becomes a plant, and to our luck, one of those stems did grow to
become a plant. Malabar spinach is a leafy plant, leaves and stems of which are
consumed as vegetable. The leaves of the plant are particularly thick and have
a typical gloss which makes the leaves quite showy in the green colour. I
decided to find some nutritional information from sources like Wikipedia, as I
normally do in posts featuring most of the edible plants, we grow. Here's some
information about the Malabar spinach.

Common Name:
Malabar Spinach, Poi/Pui, Indian Spinach, Ceylon Spinach

Botanical Name:
Basella Alba

Type of plant:
Vine, creeper.

Native of:
Known as a native of Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and New Guinea. It is
known to have been naturalized in a number of other countries, primarily
because it is used as a vegetable.

Sunlight: Loves full sunlight.

Colours:
Foliage - Light to dark green. Blooms - white to purplish.

Soil Conditions:
Isn't very fussy when it comes to soil conditions. But does best in fertile
soils with good amount of moisture and organic contents (humus).

Propagation:
Stem cuttings, seeds.

Varieties:
Apart from the green one featured here.

Minerals

Calcium, Ca

109 mg

Iron, Fe

1.2 mg

Magnesium, Mg

65 mg

Phosphorus, P

52 mg

Potassium, K

510 mg

Sodium, Na

24 mg

Zinc, Zn

0.43 mg

Copper, Cu

0.107 mg

Manganese, Mn

0.735 mg

Selenium, Se

0.8 µg

Vitamins

Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid

102 mg

Thiamin

0.05 mg

Riboflavin

0.155 mg

Niacin

0.5 mg

Pantothenic acid

0.053 mg

Vitamin B-6

0.24 mg

Folate, total

140 µg

Folic acid

0 µg

Folate, food

140 µg

Folate, DFE

140 µg

Vitamin B-12

0 µg

Vitamin A, RAE

400 µg

Retinol

0 µg

Vitamin A, IU

8000 IU

Vitamin D (D2 + D3)

0 µg

Vitamin D

0 IU

The small plant that
grew from the small stem that my mother planted

The small
plant started to grow bigger.

The
growing malabar spinach vine. Notice the shine on the leaves.

The
growing malabar spinach vine. Notice the shine on the leaves.

The plant,
infact, the vine, which has grown from a small plastic pot to become a more
than 12 feet long vine has now reached the blooming stage, with the plant
bearing quite a lot of buds. I think, I'll let it bloom and bear fruits, to try
planting the seeds from the next year. Since this vine is really easy to plant
and needs absolutely no care and growing so big in a small pot like that, I can
say that it doesn't need lots of space as well.

The growing malabar spinach vine. Here are the small buds that I noticed a few days back.

Here's small buds that I captured with my cellphone camera today, afternoon.

Here's small buds that I captured with my cellphone camera today, in the afternoon.

Here's small buds that I captured with my cellphone camera today, in the afternoon.

In the
upcoming posts, I have a lot of options to share with you. My chrysanthemum
plants have started bearing buds, with all the plants now featuring small buds,
which, I think will give me blooms in the upcoming week or so. Then I am yet to
share the lotus plants which now have small round leaves typical to lotuses.
Then I'll be having this Malabar spinach vine blooming by the next week. I'll
be back with something from these in the upcoming week. Till then keep trying
and HAPPY GARDENING!